


Suite Bergamasque: III

by iirusu



Series: Who Wants to Live Forever [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Derealization, Dissociation, It's not gay to carry the homies after they dissociate, Near hypothermia ayyy, Original Character(s), POV Original Character, POV Third Person, Platonic Love, Setting based off red lodge, Small house details based off my own home, Snippet of a character's past life, brief mention of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iirusu/pseuds/iirusu
Summary: He feels physically numb, so his brain helpfully supplies that maybe he should return home, but the thought doesn’t feel like it actually happened, so he keeps going. There’s wheat behind the house. Cows, too. So he just wades through them, occasionally running the flat of his hand along a cow’s flank and vaguely thinking that he wanted to draw it, that the full moon truly highlights the beauty. But then he’s forgot as soon as he thought it, because he’s nearing the end of the field.He must have been walking for a while, then.☂ Rated T for dissociation and mention of death.
Series: Who Wants to Live Forever [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039818
Kudos: 2





	Suite Bergamasque: III

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've posted on here, as I've mostly been writing songs rather than long-form pieces. I recently wrote this for a friend and I as a means to explain the feeling of derealization we both experienced frequently as children. The characters used in this are from a personal project on hold of mine, a comic which I haven't started yet. This doubles as a glimpse into Benedict's past life, as in my comic, he is not alive in the present.
> 
> Thank you for reading.

Things are getting bad again.

Benedict loathes this. He doesn’t know if he can take much more of it.

His discontent rises with each step he takes, down the hall, down his stairs, down down down. He’s a ghost on these rugs, body leaving no indents where it should. He feels like he’s searching for a vision, one that he’s never understood.

He reaches the bottom of the steps and feels his stomach swoop unpleasantly at the last drop. His friends are passed out on couches, under the table, over a body. They’re strewn everywhere. He would’ve smiled at it some time ago, but now, he tingles wherever his skin pulls and doesn’t feel like he’s actually in the same room with them. 

This isn't his house. These aren’t his friends.

It just looks the same.

The thought makes Benedict’s brain numb a little, his hands limpen, his ankles quaver. He has to get out of here. He kind of stumbles over one of them in his shaky canter to the back screen door, but he doesn’t actually feel like he did that. He forgets the touch as soon as it’s happened.

The backdoor is tough work– damn thing never _fit_ correctly– but he manages. It’s open within the minute and a chill nips at his skin the second it is. It’s not okay, it feels terrible, but he slides through the opening anyway and pulls it shut once he’s out in the cold. He prays that no one’s stirred, though he also kind of thinks that maybe it would be better if they did, if someone came outside with him. Talked through this, whatever this was, whatever he was feeling, doing.

He didn’t actually know, what he was doing. Just stepped and stepped, onto concrete that once was gravel, with tiny trees sprouting from it, watching his feet, watching the movement, feeling the cold just dwindle away. Like he was pushing the feeling of the wind behind him. What if he could push this haze behind, too? The thought has him thinking about thoughts. He doesn’t really know if he wants to get rid of it, wonders what would be left if the waters were cleared.

He figured everything would be drained.

He actually has to think, now that he’s made it to the back by the fence, and Benedict stands for several minutes repeating the words “climb the fence,” over and over in his head until he actually comprehends what to do. Everything feels slow. But then he gets it, _climb the fence,_ and he does. It burns a little, the wood against his soft hands. It’s never been a pleasant sensation. 

He’s out now, though. It’s cold. He feels more physically numb now, so his brain helpfully supplies that maybe he should _return home,_ but the thought doesn’t feel like it actually happened, so he keeps going. There’s wheat behind the house. Cows, too. So he just wades through them, occasionally running the flat of his hand along a cow’s flank and vaguely thinking that he wanted to draw it, that the full moon truly highlights the beauty. But then he’s forgot as soon as he thought it, because he’s nearing the end of the field. He must have been walking for a while, then.

He kind of just sways there, with the cool wind’s weight pushing against him. He thinks of how he looks from a birds–eye angle, then from the back, and then from right in front. He wants to draw it, at every angle. He remembers now, that he wants to draw it.

There’s a cow coming up next to him so he just throws his arms over it with as much lethargy as you’d expect, for someone going numb at midnight, and just hugs what he can while it moves. It sways with him, breathing and grunting, eating dried grass below. Ben likes that he’s like this, hugging a cow outside at night, and thinks it’s quite nice, to feel like this. To sway. He feels very clouded, not there, in a world separate from the house. The house with his friends. The house?

Oh.

Suddenly, he isn’t feeling so dreamy, but the fog hasn’t faded, so he’s just left clutching the cow and _scared._ Why is not at the house? He forgets. He forgets, he forgets, always forgets. But he feels cold. And he doesn’t think he can move. He knows that he should know the way back, he always has, from the corner from this field to home, but now comes nothing. He lifts his head and sees the house, a blurry speck in the distance, but he doesn’t actually comprehend that he’s looking at it. 

Didn’t he leave because it wasn’t really the house?

The memory of thinking that comes back to him, and he feels nothing. Nothing comes. He’s too cold. He can’t think at all, in any capacity, so he just slumps off of the cow and curls into himself on the ground. The dirt is soft and it feels pretty nice. It’s a bit warmer than him, too. Probably by proximity of the cow. He smiles when he sees the cow now, thinks it’s the most charming thing in the world, and feels good to have it next to him. He feels like he’s fading, going to sleep, maybe.

Time passes.

He feels like he’s hearing noises, maybe crunching on the wheat, after a while. He thinks they sound like footsteps. But he doesn’t know to trust that what he’s hearing is actually happening, so he doesn’t do anything. But then the sound gets a bit more frantic, full of intention, and Ben feels strangely proud that he can recognize that. He’s had to get good at recognizing footsteps after living with family. Right now he likes that he can recognize this. That he’s better at this, than anyone else.

But then the steps stop, and he feels a bit upset by the lack of auditory stimulation. It feels too quiet now that it’s gone, and he thinks maybe he might be coming to when something heavy drops down beside him. He startles a bit, brain awake enough to perceive danger, but physically he’s too slow to do much other than move back slightly.

“Benny?”

It’s Francis. Oh, it’s Francis. Benedict feels the haze dissipating. He loves Francis! He loves his friend. He wants to hold Francis, run his hands through his hair. These thoughts are good, he decides. Francis is good.

“Benny, what are you doing out here?” Francis’s voice is quivering, and he’s shaking a bit from the cold, so Benedict tries to reach up to hug him, but his movements translate far slower than he’s expecting.

Francis is faster, so he places a hand on his face, and it’s so warm. He leans into it, smiling a little and feeling like he can’t do much else. But then he cracks open his eyes, and Francis’s eyes are full of worry, brimming with tears, so lucent with life. It makes something in him stir. The fog feels like it’s going. Ebbing and ebbing, it’s always been coming or ebbing.

It takes a few moments for Ben to register everything around him while his brain comes down– or would it be up?– from the state he was in. He breathes in and it’s heavy, and it feels good despite his raw nose, to breathe like this, to be with Francis’s hand still pressed to his face and the cows circling around them distantly. And it takes a full minute, to catch up, to understand what happened and why he was out there. His skin prickles uncomfortably as he becomes more and more aware, more cold, entire soul frigid. When he lets the draft wash over him entirely, he thinks he knows. He thinks he knows what led him here.

“I dissociated,” Benedict’s voice sounds foreign to his own ears, a bit too weak. Raspy.

“Oh, dolly. Let’s get back inside, okay?” Francis’s voice is soft like his words, and he lifts Benedict up with as much strength as he can muster in the moment. Ben thinks that it feels better to not have to do the moving himself, that Francis will do it.

He gets lifted up into Francis’s arms and let’s himself drift a bit while they move. It’s different from before, though. Less of a mental fog and more of a physical drowsiness.

When they come to the fence, Francis just unlatches it with one hand and it opens, and Ben thinks it’s a shame that he didn’t notice the latch on his way out; he could have avoided the splinters. Oh well. Francis kicks it shut behind him and doesn’t bother re-latching, knows that it’ll click shut by itself when it connects with the door. When they reach the back door Ben thinks that maybe he should be put down to make the process easier, but he feels like he can barely speak right then, and that maybe, he wouldn’t be able to stand if he tried.

It’s warm when they enter the house, almost unbearably so, and it hits Benedict just then how _far_ his body temperature had dropped. There’s a chill deep in his bones, all febrility far too invading.

Francis steps over many bodies that Benedict now thinks are awake, but he doesn’t have time to ponder it because he’s being set down on a wooden chair at the kitchen table, and then Francis is gone. It takes a couple seconds to register that he’s just walked a few feet in front of him, to the tap, to fill up two tubs with what sounds like scalding water. The filter in the faucet popped off and fell into the drain a long time ago– now you can hear the temperature.

Ben thinks that last thought shouldn’t make much sense, that it’s a bit like synesthesia, but he doesn’t have that. While he mulls over this, Francis is coming back with his two tubs, and sets one down on the floor by Ben’s feet and the other on the table, by his hands.

“Dip,” he says, brushing the hair out of Benedict’s eyes so they can make eye-contact.

“Okay,” Ben dips his hands and feet in as he’s told– the mumbles in the living room following his voice not going unnoticed– and it tingles, as he anticipated, but makes him feel better. He vaguely registers Francis saying something to the others in the living room.

Then Francis is sliding into a chair next to him, leaning his weight on the table and propping his hand under his chin. Benedict wants to draw this, he thinks. Francis looks good in the moonlight. Like a ghost. They’re quiet for a long time.

This reminds him of a film he saw once.

“Benedict,” Francis eventually asks. 

“What is it like,”

“to be freezing to death?”

He thinks about the cows and the moon.

“Quite serene.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pieces I listened to while creating this work:
> 
> Please Do Not Disturb - Domonique Lawalrée (From "First Meeting")  
> [Starting at "Things are getting bad again."]
> 
> Stem Cell, for 7 Clarinets - Paul Richards (From "Leave Me Alone," Minimalist Music for Clarinets)  
> [Starting at "Oh."]
> 
> Rêverie - Claude Debussy (From "Debussy: Estampes, Pour le Piano, Piano Works")  
> [Starting at "Benedict?"]


End file.
